Posts
167
Joined
2/10/2023
Location
Claremore, OK, USA
Edited Date/Time
9/21/2023 1:05pm
So because of my work schedule I get off work too late to ride any during the week if a local track opens for practice. So I only get Saturday and Sunday to ride. I'm in horrible riding shape and can only do like 2 laps before I have to pull off. My hands get tired and I get tired. Maybe I'm holding my breath sometimes I'm not sure.
But I'm wanting to start cycling and doing cardio during the week. But will that even help with my riding stamina? I've heard some say you can train all you want but you can't substitute seat time. I wish I could ride myself into shape by riding 3 or 4 days a week but unfortunately I can't. So will doing cardio during the week help with my weekend riding/races?
Riding my bicycle helped me more than anything (beside riding).
It won’t hurt, but if your hands are getting tired, focusing on engaging your legs and keeping your arms loose when you ride is probably going to help more. I ride 2-3 times a month, and can do two 30 minute motos. I am in good shape off the bike, but it’s mostly just practicing riding smooth and using the larger muscles (butt, legs) when you’re riding.
I like to say it this way:
A mountain bike will match the rate of inflation at the motocross skills bank.
About 20 years ago an old friend (now age 83) told me I should get a mountain bike to train for motocross.
I told him "I'm a runner and that makes me stronger than being a cyclist".
Running in these hills makes me both physically and mentally stronger, that's a fact.
He was right though, I should have bought a mountain bike... Fast forward to 2022, age 42 and I'm in physical therapy for a pretty serious knee surgery (ACL and I have minimal cartilage left on my femur). I can't run anymore. I bought an older mountain bike and started riding the tight, technical single-track trails two miles up the road an average of one hour five evenings each week at a hard pace.
Moto skills translate over to the mountain bike and the mountain bike skills partially translate back if you ride it hard.
I rarely ride motocross practice anymore, but I can come off the couch and be competitive in the 40+A class.
I stopped by my old buddy's place and told him he was right... I should have listened to his advice back then.
Turns out, I am hooked on mountain biking and lucky enough to live within driving distance of some world-class trails.
You don't need anything special, get a good used mountain bike and set it up for your weight and speed.
For me, that's a 2007 Transition Gran-Mal. It's a 26" downhill / free-ride bike.
I have found that swimming can drastically help with cardio on the motorcycle. Swimming forces you to focus on your breathing while being physically demanding. It is also great for your joint health compared to running or cycling.
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Same, however I mountain biked my local trails. Trail riding is almost just as fun as moto once you get into it.
Before the exercise stuff, the single best thing one can do, and it takes no extra time, is to really nail down a solid clean diet.
After that, yes, I notice that running stairs even once a week DEFINITELY helps for moto.
That's been really hard for me adopt. The squeezing with my legs. Coming up I was never told to squeeze with my legs. Nobody ever talked about that. It was always, stand up, balls of your feet, elbows up, stay off the clutch. That's it. So I've always ridden with all upper body. And I did fine as a teenager racing that way. I feel like gripping with your legs is a relatively new technique. I remember to do it sometimes but I'm working on it
Cycling definitely helps me on the dirt bike. At the moment i cycle to the gym which is about 10 minutes, lift weights then cycle home. I cycle fast to get my heart rate up to simulate a race. I've found the combo of cardio and weights to really help. For weights i focus on dead lifts, squats, chest and back exercises. Just cycling alone didn't have me in a good shape as lifting weights as well.
P90x and LIIFT4 also helped me get in much better shape which transferred to the bike and you don't have to leave the house and just need minimal equipment
It’s not just squeezing with your legs, it’s having your legs control the movement of the motorcycle over bumps and in and out of turns. Sure, my back and chest are smoked towards the end of the moto, but my glutes and quads are what I feel the next day. Slow down a bit, loosen your arms up, and use your legs to drive the bike where you want it. Something that’s a bit harder to teach is throttle control / bike control and line choice that just makes life easier. But try to find the easiest way around the track, with your legs doing the most work.
The way I teach people how to hold onto a bike is by putting your bike on a work stand on flat ground.
stand on the bike in the attack position, then take your hand off the bars. When you remove your hands you instantly grab on with your knees to stop from falling. And then I say. That’s how you hold on to a bike !!!!
And they understand it instantly!!💪💪
In a podcast with Grant Langston he talked about this new age technique of using your legs and he said he was always an upper body rider. I'm glad he said that cause it makes me feel like I'm not alone. I'm gonna have to change my whole riding style which is gonna be really difficult. I wanna start racing more but not being able to hang on after 2 laps isn't gonna cut it. It's also dangerous
The advice given above is excellent regarding legs, knees, core, etc.
I suggest you go out to a track and ride at 75% for a few laps...
Practice gripping with your knees and tighten up your core while you relax your arms and grip a bit more than you're used to.
Use your knees & core to initiate some turns (with your core slightly tensed up and your arms relaxed).
That exaggerated technique can help because when you try to ride faster, you'll relax toward a more optimum technique.
As the track gets rougher, this technique becomes more and more important.
Thank you for the advice. I have a hard time not going and pushing 100% to try and be faster. I need to swallow my pride and focus on endurance and slow it down so I can learn how to ride longer and push for longer and be safer about it. Racing a 450 with numb hands isn't very safe
Since you mentioned it’s a radical departure from how you ride, go ride normally until your arms are smoked. Then slow down a bit, and adjust your technique so that you can keep circulating the track at a decent pace. When your arms are fried, it will force you to use your legs and core.
Cardio, Cardio, and more cardio, as much as you can get. I prefer cycling, but i work night shift so i usually hit up PF and hop on the spin bike or try to run a 5k before I do my weight lifting routine. I was a very very fat college kid. Graduated HS 3 years ago and shot up to 267 Pounds. Started eating only 12-1400 calories a day, not clean necessarily but whatever I wanted in that calorie range, and in 10 months I have dropped to 188. I used to dread GNCCs and going 2+ hours, now im racing as much as I can, sometimes back to back XC races on Saturday and Sunday with no issue. Focus on your resting heart rate. It will drop along with weight loss, as its a good way to determine where you're at physically, if your resting at 55bpm you're in pretty good cardio fitness. This will lead to you not being overly exhausted on the bike as your heart rate wont go as high during racing.
Do this....it's hard but it works. Even if you just do your best to try to hang through the workouts it still works well. Add in some yoga and you will be all set.
Alternate method do intervals on stairs with some yoga mixed in.
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Funny I ride my Mountain bike all the time and I don't really think any of the skills for each translate. A dirt bike to me has inertia from the engine so it makes the whole experience different, plus the fact you are not gripping your mountain bike with your knees. The only thing that translates for me is it's a similar attack position on both.
I've had a similar experience...I'm 43...started riding mountain bikes last year...got a lot more into it this year...I LOVE it! So much fun...I live within about 30 minutes of three world class trail systems...and within an hour of about 5 or 6 more...Utah is really mountain bike heaven...(and that doesn't count Moab, or the St. George area...which are 3-4 hours away).
And I'm on an old 2017 Devinci Troy...27.5..."All mountain" bike.
At my age, I'm not getting any "faster" on a dirt bike...so the easiest way to improve my results is to improve my fitness...I can come off the couch now, and go as hard as I can for WAY longer...all thanks to mountain biking.
I honestly feel like I don't even need to ride my dirt bike outside of races anymore...just mountain bike a few times a week, and show up at the races and I'm going to get a better result. (Though I still do ride my dirt bike).
Pit Row
I'll also add that I think P90X is a great "at home" workout for moto...easy to do at home, doesn't take a ton of time, doesn't require any machines...and is a REALLY good workout...
Man I think I'm convinced. I have a mountain bike trail only 1 mile away from home. It would be alot more fun than just doing a workout
I've found mountain biking has helped me carry more speed through corners on the dirt bike (with no motor to get me back up to speed after a corner I have to have a faster corner entry, and roll through the corners better)...plus line selection is a bit more important on a mountain bike than a dirt bike, so the mountain bike has helped me there. But otherwise, I tend to agree with you...they are ridden totally different...
Cardio training in whatever form suits you is will make a huge difference.. Focus on sustained effort at a moderate heart rate, typically 130-140. Once a week throw in a short High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) session. Six to ten minutes at max heart rate, say 6 x 1 minute sprints on foot or bicycle, is massively beneficial. If I had to choose only one form of training it would be a couple of HIIT sessions a week.
If you prefer riding on the balls of your feet, try this. In a standing position position your feet on the pegs with your toes pointed inward slightly (almost touching the engine/clutch covers). Now rotate around the balls of your feet until the ankle/calf section of your boot is against the frame. With minimal effort you can lock your legs very strongly against the bike, much more effectively than just squeezing your knees.
Core strength training. Find a set of exercises that work on the main core muscle groups - abs, obliques and lower back. Add in some stability exercises as well.
Work on hand grip strength; not wrist or forearm but specifically hand and fingers. Dead hangs are good for this.
I could write a long ass response to this but I’ll try to keep it short. I too find myself in your shoes. Going from no kids to two kids the last two years I’ve found myself getting frustrated because I can only do 2 laps like I used to do 20 min motos. I’ve found taking the first ride out in the day easy and letting myself warm up helps me the rest of the day rather than trying to go out and hammer right away I tend to blow up my arms. I did recently get a peloton and I have found that helps me a lot. The workouts they do have you sitting, standing and doing variable resistances. I have a track at my house but even that is tough to get out on during the week. 5 am peloton ride and a quick 20 min core workout have brought me back to 75% of what I used to be when I was riding 3-4 times a week. (I ride once every two weeks if I’m lucky now.) I try to do that m-f every morning and it’s been helping. Hope this helps you.
Outstanding advice thank you!
If you’re just tooling around on trails for cardio then not so much but when you hit the faster sections and downhills then it’s more relevant. Standing on the balls of your feet, body position and weight transfer, looking ahead at the trail, brake modulation etc.
Unpopular opinion: cycling is worthless. It promotes poor posture in the spine and develops quad dominance. Run instead. It’s cheaper and harder. If you can tolerate that, at least swim. But the cardio gains from cycling aren’t worth the shrimp back posture and push mechanic dependency you’ll have to correct when you ride a throttle bike. Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. If you spend the bulk of your two wheel time in a Tour de France posture, you’re going to set yourself up for more work overcoming it.
I took a year and a half off of moto, rode here and there in that span but nothing to be proud of. In that drought, I was doing a lot of cycling, focused more on that for awhile, raced xc mtb and road previously. Got into gravel racing earlier this year, have done pretty well with it.
For sustained efforts, nothing beats a road bike. To be completely honest, nothing beats a road bike on a trainer (when focusing on efforts) Doing intervals with no factors such as turns or wind or road conditions make it consistent. Wasn’t able to ride today so got on the trainer. 25 minutes at 160 watts, 10 minutes at 185 watts, 5 minutes at 200. Finished with 10 minutes at 150 watts and a cool down for 5 minutes tapering down to like 80 watts. I was smoked and it was done under an hour.
Mountain biking is awesome, I try to get on mine atleast once a week. Like mentioned above, the moto-mtb never really translated outside of keeping up fitness from doing both. “Mountain biking vision” is something that does translate, and if I’ve been doing alot more of it my focus is pretty clear on the track. Tight single track you’re going to focus on everything around you and on climbs and descents you’ll pick a line pretty quickly, though it doesn’t always work, haha.
There’s a group road ride not too far from me that rides twice a week. That’s a great workout, just like moto, you’re always going to ride faster with other people. Usually half way through the ride the faster group pulls away and becomes a hammer fest.
I do lift weights as well, but I’m no gym rat by any means.
Long story short, get a bicycle. Road bike, mtb, cyclocross, you can’t go wrong. You’ll likely enjoy it.
This, running definitely promotes good form. Chest up, shoulders back, tight core.
I’m in bad shape too. I got wore out reading this! I better get my ass to the gym. It’s been so freakin hot I haven’t wanted to get out of the house. It cooled down here lately, it was only 97 today and humid on the good ole Texas Coast. Better than the 110 a few weeks ago. I’ve spent more time inside this summer than in my life. I’ve paid for it too. I got to get with the program and get in shape. I’m scared to see how few laps I can make when I got to the track next week.
I've long believed that running made me mentally tougher and physically stronger / better than cycling for moto.
I don't really disagree with you fellas on the benefits of running for a moto guy.
What I've discovered is that riding a mountain bike in some trails does as much for my two-wheel IQ or off-road IQ as I miss by not running. One of my buddies had told me at my first race this summer that I look smoother and less forced than I used to. The bicycle promotes being a little more smooth and efficient. I've traditionally been a bit of a hammer-head, so that helps a ton.
For me, running is no longer an option. Ultimately, if you can do a mix of both, that would be the better way to go.
In my opinion, you will get more strength and fitness with less time invested if you're primarily a runner.
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